In their “Girlfriend” ad, Taco Bell represents its customers as people who are highly social and out in the world, hanging out at bars, concerts, food trucks, and parties. Featuring an attractive, heterosexual, white couple, the ad targets young white men in an urban environment by showing men always having fun with friends and a girlfriend. While Taco Bell always caricatures Mexican culture through the cultural appropriation of food, this ad also markets sexism with a side of eating. The ad speaks from a guy’s perspective about girlfriends taking some of men’s food. The Loaded Grillers, the ad claims, are “grilled inside a tortilla so you don’t have to share.”
“Girlfriend” opens with an attractive woman and man sitting next to each other…show more content… What if a man wants to order a salad? This choice is not validated as manly within our media system. In addition, “Girlfriend” implies that the man is paying for the food, thus affirming an economic structure where women are supported by men in order to make traditional masculine and feminine heterosexual roles. Media, including beauty magazines, advertisements, video games, television shows, films, and more, create unrealistic standards of beauty that even models can only reach with Photoshop. Through the objectification of women, media helps create a culture where women are appreciated more for their beauty than their abilities, and that culture has real consequences, like up to 50% of American women on diets at any given time and 20 million women with eating disorders. Eating disorders result in death more than any other mental illness. Eating disorders affect men, as well. However, this ad is an example of how media portray women’s eating as inherently problematic, while men eating fast food is normalized. Not claiming that the ad necessarily portrays a clinical eating disorder nor i’m not claiming that eating disorders are caused by the media, rather than a mix including genetic, medical, psychological, environmental, and other factors. However, media, including this ad, help to create a culture that encourages…show more content… Of course, it doesn’t show the health effects for men or women who eat this way. In addition, it doesn’t show the consequences for the girlfriend if she gained weight. In an ideal world, her weight wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t cause her to be less likely to get hired, less likely to be promoted, or paid up to 6% less than non-overweight people in the same positions etc. Overall Taco Bell is not selling quality nutrition and urges the overconsumption of fat, calories, and